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It's not for the professional scientist seeking in-depth understanding either. If you have a background similar to mine, you will love this book.If you do have this sort of background, then you'll find it to be a very good summary of string theory. First of all, this book is not for everybody. I never took any postgrad physics, so given my interest in physics I've had to study tensor analysis, quantum field theory and general relativity on my own. The issue of typos seems to be an ongoing one with the Demystified series, but thankfully this particular book seems to suffer from fewer typos than some of the others.Aside from that, this reviewer found it a very useful introduction to the subject, and would strongly recommend it to anyone in a similar situation. If you are either type of reader, you're better off reading something else.Every book has its readership target, and this book found one appreciative reader in this reviewer. I found the book easy enough to be readable, and challenging enough to learn something from.
It will prepare you for texts like Zwiebach and Polchinsky.There are flaws in the book, however. It's not for the pop-science reader, it contains far too much mathematics to be of any use for him. It will give you the broad concepts without skimping on the mathematics. I have a background in engineering, so I'm familiar with differential equations, complex analysis, quantum mechanics. After getting some exposure to those subjects, I felt I could tackle an introduction to strings, and thought this book would be a good way of quickly getting the broad concepts. There are still way too many typos in the book, and some of the examples are stepped through in steps that ought to be obvious to anyone at this level, while others are not explained in sufficient detail. However, it may not be suited to pop-science readers or professionals.
The book is interesting. Very good for an overall view of the subject, but it has to be taken carefully, since if one wants to say that "knows" string theory, this book alone will not give that. But if you are from another field (e.g. experimental nuclear physics) just trying to understand what this theory is all about, then the book is perfect.
Most importantly, the answers are pretty much universally correct, as far as I could check, and they uniformly cover the basic topics that are important for actual researchers in modern high-energy theoretical physics.If you're a college student, high school student, or a mathematically skilled "semi-outsider" who is bright enough to learn advanced theoretical physics, please ignore the other reviewers who clearly have no idea what theoretical physics actually is, and buy this book. It's the format that succeeds to attract the reader's attention and give him or her the (semi-realistic) feeling that the knowledge needed to fully master string theory is of encyclopedic character and "learnable" in a finite time.Although the brevity of many explanations will clearly make it insufficient for all readers to understand the true origin of all results and steps, this is a book focusing on real, solid scientific arguments.This is a simplified but technical, not popular, book that won't overwhelm you with postmodern philosophical babbling, trying to convince you that it can replace the calculations and lead you instantly to "big" conclusions without any hard work.
Imagine that your task is to take Polchinski's textbook on String Theory and compress both volumes to 320 light pages or so.You have to include some basics of GR, QFT, abstract classical mechanics but also the CFTs, bosonic strings, light cone gauge, T-duality, symmetries, RNS superstring, heterotic strings, D-branes, AdS/CFT, black holes. I actually love the book, its format, and its focus.
In fact, I like it even now. But you also add some material that was not yet fully covered in Polchinski's book such as tachyon condensation on D-branes and the speculative field of string cosmology, among others.I think that if you realize your task well, you will end up with a book very similar to McMahon's book.
As a kid or undergrad, I would actually love the playful format of the book, the icons and big headlines. It is a book that shows the actual correct calculations and derivations, albeit in a simplified form.
You may like it, too.
what the author does is writes sentences between long equations such as "It follows that" or "and so" without breaking down the origins or introducing the concepts.Perhaps I was expecting a different book, so I gave him an extra star in case I was at fault. I thought this book would be a good introduction to getting into a bit of math. I have just about every book about string theory and theoretical physics written for the lay person- Kaku, Greene, Randall, Smolin, Tyson, Hawking, Feynam, etc.These books all avoid the complicated math and get to the heart of the theories. But I was expecting a book that would introduce the layperson to the math involved in String Theory. BOY WAS I WRONG.You pretty much have to be up to speed on all the math to use this book. There is no introduction to calculus or differential equations. Instead what I got was a book that requires you know everything about advanced math (and perhaps nothing about how that math applies to String Theory). The author kindly suggests his several other Demystified books if you're rusty in the math.
There is no in-depth discussion on how non-Abelian gauge symmetries are incorporated into string theory other than what is done in one chapter on heterotic string theory. The most challenging part of string theory for those who want to learn it is not the routine calculations and "index gymnastics" that is found in this book but rather the essential meaning and "intuition" behind the mathematics of the theory. The cover of this book promises that the reader will be able to understand the mathematical tools necessary to "decipher" string theory, but it does not make good on these promises. There is no discussion for example on the mathematics of Calabi-Yau manifolds, and the accompanying notions of holonomy, mirror symmetry, and orbifolds. To get a deep appreciation of this mathematics though will require years of study and searching in the original mathematical literature, some of this going back over a century. What the book does rather well is to introduce the reader well versed in relativistic quantum field theory to string theory as it was articulated in the first two decades of its discovery as a theory.
Yes, these are all complex mathematical topics, but it is THESE topics that cause problems for students or those curious about string theory, especially those that are teaching themselves, a readership that this book was supposedly written to target. As physical theories go, string theory makes unprecedented use of very complicated and esoteric mathematics, coming from fields such as algebraic geometry, algebraic topology, and the theory of several complex variables. There is no discussion at all on how to use K-theory to classify D-brane charges. Yes, the author does discuss more modern topics in string theory such as D-branes, Chan-Paton indices, the Ads/CFT correspondence, and the holographic principle, but he does so in a manner that does not shed light on the formidable mathematics behind these concepts. The treatment is very cursory and does not prepare the reader for meaningful perusal of the research literature. This reviewer recommends the book by Becker, Becker, and Schwarz as the best one for addressing some of the "intuition" behind the mathematics of string theory.
It is well worth the time and effort, even if one does not intend to conduct original research in string theory, but instead is passionately curious about what could in terms of its mathematics alone be easily described as the most beautiful theory ever constructed.
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